Definitions: Downloads, Bookmarks, Streams, Burnable Downloads ...
Yahoo! Music Unlimited offers music in two ways, through a monthly subscription and as individually purchased, burnable downloads. Within the Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription service, we refer to two types of song availability, downloaded or bookmarked (streaming). You may choose how your subscription music is delivered, and in some cases, you should make the choice to best reflect how you will use the music.
Here's what each of these terms means:
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Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription download track. As part of your subscription, you can click Add to My Music next to songs and albums and have these song files added instantly. They are, by default, downloaded as full song files to your computer. This means you can access them when offline (as long as your subscription is up to date), and you must have them downloaded to your computer to transfer them to portable devices (if you have Yahoo! Music Unlimited To Go). However, you can only listen to these songs on up to three machines; after that, you must deactivate one of your machines to use the downloaded songs files on another.
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Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription bookmark or streamed track. When you choose this method (this is not the default; instructions on how to change your default method appear below), tracks added when you click Add to My Music are not fully downloaded to your computer. Only a bookmark to the track on our servers is added. This means you can listen to the track when you're online, but not when the computer is not attached to the internet. Also, streamed subscription tracks cannot be transferred to portable players. Finally, you can listen to subscription bookmarked tracks on an unlimited number of compuers rather than just three. This is very useful: it means that, for example, if you travel a great deal and want to access your entire collection of subscription music from any computer connected to the internet, you might want to change your preferences bookmark songs when you add them from Y! Unlimited rather than download them. That way, you can simply log on anywhere, on any machine with the Yahoo! Music Jukeboxon it, log in, and hear your music.
To change your default subscription music settings: Go to Edit > Preferences > Y! Unlimited, and click Bookmark It under When I Add a Selection to My Music. You can always change it back.
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Purchased, burnable downloads. Many music services refer to non-subscription, burnable songs simply as downloads. With Yahoo! Music Unlimited, these are called burnable downloads. They are different from subscription downloaded music, in that you purchase them individually and they are not governed by the same digital rights management (DRM) as subscription songs. You can burn them to CDs, use them on portable devices without the same licensing restrictions as subscription music, and they do not expire if your subscription ends. In My Music, you will see a column header called Burnable, which indicates whether a track is a burnable download or a subscription track, and what type.